DIY Pick and Place machine

[briandorey]

For the past 4-5 months I and my brother have been designing and building a DIY pick and place machine to place surface mount components on circuit boards.

We built our own machine rather than buying one due to the large amount of space a commercial machine takes up and the cost to buy them!

I have got a new blog post at http://briandorey.com/post/DIY-Pick-and-Place-V2-Project-Complete.aspx which shows the various parts of the machine and a video of the machine running:

The machine is driven by Mach3 and a Smoothstepper interface board with an Arduino mini to control the feeder activator system.
Current placement rate is around 600 components per hour.

[mikeselectricstuff]

A few comments :
A much better effort than most of the ones we've seen so far - at least you've realised that feeders are essential. You probably want to get overall speed up by about a factor of two though to make it more useful.

I didn't see any mention of auto nozzle change - this is important for unattended operation.
 
You don't need seperate holders for each size on the vib feeder - just a channel with an adjustable endstop for the different lengths.

It seems to spend a lot of time waiting for one move to complete before starting the next - it could often be starting an X/Y move while the Z axis is completing its move


 

[briandorey]

A few comments :
A much better effort than most of the ones we've seen so far - at least you've realised that feeders are essential. You probably want to get overall speed up by about a factor of two though to make it more useful.

I didn't see any mention of auto nozzle change - this is important for unattended operation.
 
You don't need seperate holders for each size on the vib feeder - just a channel with an adjustable endstop for the different lengths.

It seems to spend a lot of time waiting for one move to complete before starting the next - it could often be starting an X/Y move while the Z axis is completing its move

Thank you for the feedback, the auto nozzle changer is on the list of future updates and the vib feeder is work in progress.

The delays between each move are due to limitations on the Mach3 software and Smoothstepper interface board, there is a 100-200ms delay when each command is sent such as turning on and off the relays, valves etc which is adding delays to the normal movement.
Version 2.1 control board is going to use a separate microcontroller as a usb slave so it can receive the commands directly from the PC while Mach3 is driving the steppers. This will hopefully get rid of the annoying delays.

[nctnico]

It looks awesome but still I wonder whether it isn't cheaper to have the boards assembled. If you look around you'll find assembly houses which will assemble small series very cheap.

[Alphatronique]

Hi

First really nice machine 

you may try to look  Dynomotion controller  http://dynomotion.com/KFLOP.html

have much more flexibility that dynomotion ,

have possibility to program on the controller most of your function so you end up
whit pc sending  witch feeder and Y,X,thetra of part then controller do the rest by itself   
dynomotion have also trajectory planner and good command buffer

that kind of approach i take when i make my "phoenix" pick place


but at that time unfortunately i was not aware of the dynomotion.

even if diy pick place was fun and instructive ,my "phoenix" have end-up in junk-yard
and replace my a single MyData machine ,that cost less that the whole phoenix project ...

[mikeselectricstuff]

It looks awesome but still I wonder whether it isn't cheaper to have the boards assembled. If you look around you'll find assembly houses which will assemble small series very cheap.

.or bought a used machine - the amount of time spent on this must have been way more than what you can get a used machine with similar capability for.

[briandorey]

It looks awesome but still I wonder whether it isn't cheaper to have the boards assembled. If you look around you'll find assembly houses which will assemble small series very cheap.

.or bought a used machine - the amount of time spent on this must have been way more than what you can get a used machine with similar capability for.

I looked at several used machines but couldnt find anything small enough to fit in the workshop. The cheapest business unit in town is £10,000+ per year so that was a lot more than i wanted to spend to automate the board production and buy a used machine as well.

[mikeselectricstuff]

It looks awesome but still I wonder whether it isn't cheaper to have the boards assembled. If you look around you'll find assembly houses which will assemble small series very cheap.

.or bought a used machine - the amount of time spent on this must have been way more than what you can get a used machine with similar capability for.

I looked at several used machines but couldnt find anything small enough to fit in the workshop. The cheapest business unit in town is £10,000+ per year so that was a lot more than i wanted to spend to automate the board production and buy a used machine as well.

The old Versatronics RV1/RV4 machines can be had for £2-5K depending on condition & feeders, and are small enough for most locations. Although it comes in a fairly big frame/stand, much of it is empty space which can be used as storage.
I'm surprised that in the 15-odd years since it came out that no new comparable machines have appeared. When I was looking at machines there just wasn't anything nearly as small. I think the TWS Quadra & smallest Fritch machines were the next size up, and quite a lot bigger.

[Mechatrommer]

do you plan to sell? how much estimated cost so far?

[briandorey]

do you plan to sell? how much estimated cost so far?

I dont think it would be viable to make these to sell with the time spent building it with our basic metalworking kit.

The total cost of materials and parts to build this machine was £3659.60.

[David_AVD]

It seems a little slow, but still a good DIY effort.   

[Jane]

There is also openPnP project, see  at
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openpnp

[Kjelt]

Great work! I wonder how many pcb's do you do in one serie if you need such a machine?

[mjrandle]

Nice work, thanks for sharing.  I would be interested to know how fast it goes once you are done refining it.

[briandorey]

Great work! I wonder how many pcb's do you do in one serie if you need such a machine?

We have been building 50+ a day by hand (approx 15 per hour)  and after 40ish boards, mistakes start to appear due to the concentration needed to place everything perfectly every time. The first day the new machine was running it did 100 boards in a 3 hour run which was much easier